A Lenoir County man who repeatedly raped his daughter received the maximum sentence possible Monday in Lenoir County Superior Court.

Darrell Bayse, 43, began his term of 23 years to 28 years, 8 months in prison after pleading guilty to charges related to the rape and incest of his daughter in 2010 and 2011.

“Even animals don’t procreate with their young. And you had sex with your own flesh and blood, so you deserve the maximum punishment,” Judge Paul L. Jones said in delivering the sentence.

On July 12, 2011, law enforcement responded to a call at a College Street residence of a suicide attempt. Bayse’s daughter, then 14 years old, was trying to slice open veins in her arm. She told the reporting officers she was trying to kill herself because of what her father had done to her over the past year.

The abuse started in Murfreesboro in August 2010.

“It was just before my 14th birthday, in August,” Assistant District Attorney Imelda Pate said the daughter told investigators. “I was playing with my dad and pinching his nipples. My dad said if I didn’t quit, he was going to do it back to me.”

Bayse did what he said he’d do, and the daughter told investigators nothing else happened, but she left the situation embarrassed.

After a shower incident in which Bayse made his daughter look at his privates, the daughter took a pack of his cigarettes. When he discovered what she had done, Bayse made his daughter perform oral sex on him. She said he made her do this two or three times before her birthday, on the 9th.

On Nov. 7, 2010, the daughter left to live at the Kennedy Home, where she stayed for seven months. She said her dad would visit on weekends, but nothing happened. On her Easter break in 2011, she went out of town, met someone and lost her virginity.

When she told her father she lost her virginity, he took her into the woods because he told her he wanted to make sure. That was the first time of several times he had sex with her, including instances at their La Grange residence, and later at his girlfriend’s house on College Street after they moved in there.

Bayse, through his attorney, said he disputed many of the allegations but he was taking the plea deal because it was in his best interest. Bayse contended his daughter repeatedly made advances on him, and that he had sex with her to satisfy her sexually, because he didn’t want her running around with other people.

The daughter is currently in treatment for the mental and emotional damage caused by the abuse.

Her mother, shaking with emotion, said to Bayse after the ruling, “I knew something was wrong all these years. I knew it. And I kept reporting it and nothing happened. You are a coward.”

Page 2 of 2 - She told him their daughter would have problems for the rest of her life because, “You were the one man that she’s supposed to be able to trust.”

Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 or wes.wolfe@kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.